Scale Computing Reliable Independent Block Engine (SCRIBE)

SCRIBE discovers all block storage devices—including flash-based solid state disks (SSDs), NVMe storage devices, and conventional spinning disks (SATA or SAS)—and aggregates them across all nodes of SC//HyperCore into a single managed pool of storage. All data written to this pool is immediately available for read or write access by any and every node in the storage cluster, allowing for sophisticated data redundancy, load balancing intelligence, and I/O tiered prioritization.

Unlike other seemingly “converged” architectures in the market, the SCRIBE storage layer does not run inside a virtual machine as a virtual storage appliance (VSA) or controller VM but instead runs parallel to the hypervisor, allowing direct data flows to benefit from zero-copy shared memory performance.

SCRIBE treats all storage in the cluster as a single logical pool for management and scalability purposes. Its real benefits come from the intelligent distribution of blocks redundantly across the cluster to maximize availability and performance for the SC//HyperCore virtual machines.

Unlike many systems where every node in a cluster requires local flash storage, with a significant dedication of flash for metadata, caching, write buffering, or journaling, SC//HyperCore virtualization suite was designed to operate with or without flash.

The virtualization suite allows mixing of node configurations, which may or may not include flash in addition to spinning disks.

Regardless of the configuration, our technology uses wide-striping to distribute I/O load and access capacity across the entire cluster, achieving levels of performance well beyond other solutions on the market with comparable storage resources and cost.

To best utilize the flash storage tier, SCRIBE assesses the user-configured and natural day-to-day workload priority of data blocks based on recent data history at the VM virtual disk level. Intelligent I/O heat mapping identifies heavily used data blocks for priority on flash storage. Virtual disks can be configured individually at varying levels of flash prioritization so that an always-changing SQL transaction log disk versus a more static disk in the same VM, for example, will allocate flash appropriately as needed for improved performance.

The SCRIBE storage layer allocates storage for block I/O requests in chunks ranging from as large as 1 MB to as small as a 512-byte disk sector. SCRIBE ensures that two or more copies of every chunk are written to the storage pool in a manner that not only creates the required level of redundancy (equivalent to a RAID 10 approach) but also aggregates the I/O and throughput capabilities of all the individual disks in the cluster, commonly known as wide striping.

In multi-drive clusters, all data is mirrored on the cluster for redundancy. Data writes between the node where the VM issues the I/O request and the nodes where the blocks will be stored occur over the private backplane network connection to isolate that traffic from incoming user/server traffic.

For temporary failures such as a node power outage, the cluster will automatically verify that any data blocks that the node contains were not changed elsewhere on the cluster while the node was offline. If the blocks were changed, SCRIBE would clean up the original blocks in the shared storage pool if they are no longer required (possibly blocks that were held by a snapshot).

As an example of orphan block detection, block 200 is contained on nodes 1 and 2.

Node 1 goes offline due to a power outage and block 200 changes when node 1 is offline. Block 200 is then updated on node 2, and a new redundant copy is written elsewhere on the cluster (as node 1 is still offline and all new or changed data always requires a redundant copy to be stored). When node 1 comes back online, SC//HyperCore virtualization suite will detect that the original contents of block 200 are no longer current or needed and correct that discrepancy by releasing them back into the storage pool.

SCRIBE enables localized performance with centralized control, ideal for edge deployments in retail, logistics, and distributed sites.

• Minimal IT footprint with automated storage operations
• High availability without external SAN or NAS dependencies
• Centrally managed clusters across hundreds of edge locations

For remote and branch locations with limited bandwidth or onsite staff, SCRIBE delivers dependable block storage that doesn’t require constant oversight.

• Built-in redundancy and failover
• Efficient replication over constrained links
• Zero-touch storage provisioning and maintenance

SCRIBE’s native virtual disk performance makes it ideal for virtualization-centric IT environments across healthcare, education, government, and SMBs.

• Fast, consistent I/O without manual tuning
• Native snapshots without merge delays
• Scales linearly with additional nodes